The Inevitable Downfall
by avenged
Summary: She remembers falling hard and fast. She remembers his hair brushing her face as he bent down to pick her up. And he said to her: Don't worry. We all fall sometimes. Oneshot, OroTsu.


He is dying.

Kabuto appears in her office and the first thing she wants to do is kill him: sever his head from his shoulders, watch the blood pour down his neck, make him _feel_ for what he has done to the people she cares about…to the man she loves.

"I won't last much longer," he explains, as though he expects her to understand.

She sniffs, twirling a pen between her fingers. "Good," she says stiffly and refuses to give him another look.

He sighs. "No, Tsunade…it's not that simple."

And another voice joins his, this one high and bone-chillingly cold, so cold and yet so familiar that she could pick it out from among a thousand others.

"_It's not that simple."_

The pen falls from her hand, and she looks at him with terror in her eyes.

"Orochimaru…what have you done?"

Kabuto lets his hood fall, and she stares into the yellow eye of the man she had written off as dead, that she had been trying to write out of her mind for the past months—a task at which she was ultimately failing.

And he explains: that he experimented, that he took the remains of the Sannin's body and merged them with his own, that his former master's greed could not be stopped even in death, that he was losing his sanity, that he no longer knew what to do.

"Tsunade, please…there must be something you can do. For him."

"_For me."_

Kabuto grips his head, wrestling with this other entity that now dwells inside him, and she bites her nails nervously.

He is dying.

And the man she has written off as dead…is returning.

She remembers him as a boy—such a pretty boy, such a smart, strong, charming boy. She remembers falling hard and fast. She remembers his hair brushing her face as he bent down to pick her up.

"_Ah, yes. And I said to you: Don't worry. We all fall sometimes."_

She watches Kabuto grimace, but she does not care, because with each passing second comes another glimpse of a much simpler past, a past she wishes with all her might that she could return to.

But it isn't that simple.

"Do you remember…" she finally manages.

"_When you were sick and I stayed by your side? When you vowed to never be dependant again? When you worked and worked until your palms bled, worked until you nearly killed yourself, and I watched you and told you that this, this was not the way. The only way…was my way."_

She snaps.

"And what has your fucking way got you, Orochimaru?" she yells, hoping to Kami that no one hears her, that no one rushes into her office and tries to kill him because he doesn't die that easily. "What have you accomplished by reducing yourself to a leech living off of a servant's body? Have you found out how to live forever? Or are you simply…existing?"

Kabuto looks at her, his eyes pleading as the pale white porcelain of Orochimaru's skin stretches further across his face.

"_I could ask you the same question, Tsunade, and you too would be at a loss for words."_

She knows he is right. She knows that deep down, she is no better than him. She touches the seal on her forehead, feels the chakra pulsing beneath it, and exhales deeply.

"_We meet again, and we look the same as when we left each other. Does that tell you nothing?"_

To be young, she once thought, was to demand respect. To be strong was to be powerful. To be wise was to be trusted. And to be gifted…

"…_is to be feared."_

He could always finish her sentences. He could always pull from her lips the very thing that she tried to say but found so hard to put into words.

"Sometimes I think you should've been a writer," she snorts, leaning back in her chair and closing her eyes.

"_And do what? Think? Sit in front of a desk and think all day? You know me better than that, Tsunade."_

Oh, she did, though she wished she didn't.

"_I am a doer. I take action. And it brings me glory."_

"Glory? _Glory_?" She stands, anger rising, and looks him in the eye. "How glorious is it, Orochimaru, to not be able to stand on your own? To rely on another to meet your needs?

To trust…is to be weak.

"_I have underestimated. I have fallen."_

And she saw herself on the ground, the grass soft beneath her cheek, and his face was above her, his hand reaching down for her, and she thought she noticed a glimmer of amusement in his eyes.

"_We all fall sometimes."_

She is crying. She does not know where the tears come from and she wills them away with everything she has, yet they fall still. They fall and she knows not what to make of them. This…this…_attachment_, this weakness of hers was broken years ago.

"_I helped you up. Will you help me?"_

"No," Kabuto moans, his voice becoming softer as his master's blood courses through his veins. "No. Kill me, Tsunade. Kill me. Stop the madness before it starts again."

"_Please."_

The two men speak the word together, asking her for two different things, asking for what she cannot give.

To kill the man she loves…or to make his chaos whole again.

She rises.

They could take her, torture her, throw her out of the village she has sworn to protect with her life…yet the words of her successor sustain her.

**Those who break the rules are trash, yes. But those who abandon their friends…are lower than trash.**

"You know what I risk in doing this for you," she says. Kabuto's hair lengthens, darkens. He will not be able to fight for much longer.

"_I know. Tsunade…thank you."_

She approaches him, takes his hand in hers, runs her thumb over his knuckles—his, not his servant's. She knows he feeds off of her, that as she promises him, he grows stronger. And she in turn feeds off of him; his knowledge seeps into her, and she thinks that while he is twisted, warped beyond humanity, she has never known someone so wise.

Trust…is not a weakness.

As the last bit of Kabuto slips away, they forge a bond, a bond they had both thought was long since destroyed, a bond that has become even stronger through separation.

Yet she has so many bonds—too many, she thinks sometimes—and behind his golden eyes she sees a flash of pink hair, toads jumping, the wide grin of a Rokudaime, and the faces of an entire village at whose head she sits, and she thinks: what have I done? What have I just done in selling my soul to the devil?

But I cannot help it.

I trust him.

I love him.

Her cheeks are wet, and with his free hand, he reaches up to brush away her tears.

"Why do you cry?" he asks quietly, gently.

_Orochimaru…_

_I will try. I will try with everything in me._

_But…we all fall._

_Sometimes._


End file.
